Technology Stuff

Despite the delights of Pinchange’s camera phone picture printer (which I mentioned on the 21st), mobile phone company Tu-Ka have shunned such frivolity. Deciding instead to focus on more practical matters.

Concerned about the sound quality of their phones in noisy places, they came up with the idea of implementing bone conductive speaker technology. Apparently this allows you to place the phone anywhere on your head, and the callers voice will be transmitted through your skull by bone conductors. Personally speaking I think a user may attract quite a few stares walking around holding a mobile phone on the top of their head, but the company seem very excited about it.

It isn’t just me who has their doubts about the usefulness of this technology though. One reviewer complained that the phone’s screen can quickly become grimy after left touching the users cheek for a long period of time. Apparently it has a tendency to absorb oils from the skin. That’s not pleasant.

Ever wondered what you should do with all those pointless pictures you’ve taken with your mildly-entertaining-at-first camera phone? Well, before you inadvertently delete them all (or is that just me?), Pinchange Co Ltd has come up with a solution.

Connect your phone directly to Pinchange’s machine (or simply insert your memory card), and within minutes you can have all your pictures printed out. And that’s not all. The photos come on sticky-back paper too! What more could you want?

Judging by these examples shown on the company website, the Japanese are about as imaginative as everyone else in the world with their camera phone usage.

Don’t let the title give you the wrong impression. I’m no Luddite. On the contrary, if I had the money my apartment would be jam packed with gadgets. I’m not, so it’s not, but you get the picture I hope.

As gadgets go, mobile phones are tough to beat. With a camera, games, MP3 player, TV etc they have everything any self-respecting geek (or Japan blog writer) could hope for.

Take the V601SH, a new Vodafone handset produced by Sharp. It has a 2-megapixel camera, complete with a 20x zoom. Not a bad start. It can also be used to view Office and Adobe Acrobat documents. A zoom option gets around the problem of the small screen. Although this model has a 2.4-inch screen, which is not to be sniffed at. And if all this isn’t enough, you can connect the phone to your TV to play games, look at photos, and play video clips. Yeah, I forgot to mention, the phone is capable of taking short videos too.

Now all this is good. And in certain situations, very useful. But the phone also supports Bow-Lingual CONNECT. And what’s Bow-Lingual CONNECT? Well, it’s a piece of software that can, ahem, translate a dogs bark into text or expressions. All you need to do is get within 15 inches of a dog (without it biting you) and away you go.

I mean, come on! Cameras and games are all well and good, but dog translators? No, that’s definitely in the arena of the useless in my books. Unless of course it actually works….

Here’s something I found over at hella cres. It’s a short documentary from about 10 years ago on “internet”. It would appear it’s the same as the internet, just minus the the.

It sounds all well and good, but it’ll never catch on.

My first post from my mobile. But I’m sending it from home as I need to see if it works.

Is this a sign of how low I’ve sunk?

Sadly, it would appear so.